Crash Course Videos: European History

Our European history is going to start around 1500 with the Renaissance, but believe it or not, that is not the actual beginning of history in the continent. So, today, we\'re going to teach you the broad outlines of the so-called Middle Ages, and look at events like the Black Plague, the Hundred Years War, and the Western Schism of the Catholic Church that set the stage for the history of modern Europe. Aberth, John. The Black Death. The Great Mortality of 1348-1350. 2nd ed. Boston: Bedford St. Martin’s, 2017.
Huizinga, Johan. The Autumn of the Middle Ages. Trans. Rodney J. Payton and Ulrich Mammitzsch. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1996.
Hunt, Lynn et al. The Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures. 6th ed. Vol. 1. Boston: Bedford St. Martin’s, 2019.
Kelley, Donald R. and Bonnie G. Smith. The Medieval and Early Modern World. Primary Sources and Reference. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Spielvogel, Jackson J. Western Civilization. 7th ed. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth, 2009.

Our European history is going to start around 1500 with the Renaissance, but believe it or not, that is not the actual beginning of history in the continent. So, today, we\'re going to teach you the broad outlines of the so-called Middle Ages, and look at events like the Black Plague, the Hundred Years War, and the Western Schism of the Catholic Church that set the stage for the history of modern Europe. Aberth, John. The Black Death. The Great Mortality of 1348-1350. 2nd ed. Boston: Bedford St. Martin’s, 2017.
Huizinga, Johan. The Autumn of the Middle Ages. Trans. Rodney J. Payton and Ulrich Mammitzsch. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1996.
Hunt, Lynn et al. The Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures. 6th ed. Vol. 1. Boston: Bedford St. Martin’s, 2019.
Kelley, Donald R. and Bonnie G. Smith. The Medieval and Early Modern World. Primary Sources and Reference. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Spielvogel, Jackson J. Western Civilization. 7th ed. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth, 2009.

The Renaissance was a cultural revitalization that spread across Europe, and had repercussions across the globe, but one smallish city-state in Italy was in many ways the epicenter of the thing. Florence, or as Italians might say, Firenze, was the home to a seemingly inordinate amount of the art, architecture, literature, and cultural output of the Renaissance. Artists like Michelangelo, Leonardo daVinci, Sandro Boticelli, and many others were associated with the city, and the money of patrons like the Medici family made a lot of the art possible. Today you\'ll learn about how the Renaissance came to be, and what impact it had on Europe and the world.

The European Renaissance may have started in Florence, but it pretty quickly moved out of Italy and spread the art, architecture, literature, and humanism across Europe to places like France, Spain, England, and the Low Countries.

The thing about European History is that it tends to leak out of Europe. Europeans haven\'t been great at staying put in Europe. As human beings do, the people of Europe were very busy traveling around to trade, to spread religion, and in a lot of cases to try and conquer other people. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Europeans developed a bunch of tools and techniques that would allow them to travel around the world, in numbers and force heretofore unseen on the planet. And a lot of the results weren\'t great for the people who already lived in the places Europeans were \"visiting.\"

European exploration had a lot of side effects. When the Old World and the New World began to interact, people, wealth, food, animals, and disease began to flow in both directions. In the New World, countless millions were killed by smallpox, measles, and other Old World diseases. Old World animals changed life in the New World irrevocably, and the extraction of wealth and resources from the Americas ultimately contributed to the development of the Atlantic Slave Trade. So, it was an exchange with a lot of downside, especially for non-Europeans.